Databases are commonly used in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and material requirement planning (MRP) applications, where organizations collect data related to the enterprise, including information related to supply of materials, product planning, purchasing, manufacturing, shipping, inventory, marketing, and sales. The collected data can be used for a variety of purposes, including determining whether an organization can take certain actions, how to take actions in an optimized manner, or to compare expected or planned values with actual values.
Typically, actual values from a production process are received at predefined intervals, such as according to a periodic reporting frequency. The volume of data to be processed can be large, which can result in long processing times before the data is available. Correspondingly, there can be a significant delay before data comparing actual and planned values is available. In addition, planning data and actual data is typically maintained in different formats, which can further increase processing time and effort. Because of the data processing load, typically, actual and comparison data is available at a high level, such as for individual process requests or reporting periods, rather than for individual operations or components involved in the process. Thus, room for improvement exists.